Key Guests Absent, but Seniors Speak Up on Budget Cuts

With a tambourine, homemade horns and a drum, a white-haired combo played “God Bless America” at the Santa Ana Senior Center on Saturday during a rally to oppose cuts in federal spending on social programs for the elderly.

And inside the center, five empty chairs reserved for Orange County representatives in Congress also made an impression on the crowd of about 200 gathered to lobby elected officials and publicize what the belt-tightening means for the old and the poor.

The message, nevertheless, will be sent to Congress on petitions that were circulated at the rally.

Griset in Attendance

There were a few politicians in attendance. Santa Ana Mayor Dan Griset, one of three speakers and a candidate for state Assembly, said the city receives $4.5 million in Community Development Block Grants. The proposed 1987 budget would reduce that sum by 30%, he said.

“On a variety of fronts in our homes and in our streets . . . this kind of funding is critical in meeting our needs,” Griset said. “Our Congress, our senators, need to hear from us.”

The federal money goes to cities and the county for such things as housing rehabilitation, health clinics and shelters for the homeless. Members of the newly formed Coalition for Liberty, Health and Housing for All, which organized the noon meeting, said these grants appear to be among the worst hit in the proposed budget for the fiscal year beginning Oct. 1, which still must be considered by Congress.

Coalition members, representing community groups for the poor, elderly and disabled, said they fear Presidential deferment of money already designated for assistance programs will further compound the crisis that local social service agencies face.

Joyce Owens-Smith, president of the Urban League of Orange County, told the crowd of mostly seniors that Congress removed $2.3 billion in community development block grant funds in the 1986 budget, and that far larger cuts are proposed, including a $15-million cut for Orange County.

“This coalition has planned this rally to let you know what is being done,” she said. “You need to think about what it will mean to you.”

Coalition members said they also are expecting cuts in Medicare and Medicaid, which provide health assistance for seniors and the poor.

Cutting to the Bone

Morris Spatz of the Orange County Housing Authority Advisory Commission said that the Gramm-Rudman bill was designed to cut “the $2-trillion federal deficit” and that the authors promised to “cut the fat.”

“But they’re cutting muscle and they’re cutting bone,” the white-haired Spatz said.

“The three most important things to you,” Spatz said, “is a decent diet, some kind of roof over your head and . . . decent health care. When they cut these programs, they are cutting years away from your life. That’s what we’re talking about.”

Four members of the Orange Senior Citizen Tune Twisters band, in their uniforms of orange, bowling-style shirts and white slacks, concluded the indoor gathering with a rendition of “God Bless America,” bringing the audience to its feet to sing along.

The 12-member band met at the Orange Senior Center years ago and performs regularly at convalescent homes and other senior centers. The opportunity to ward off loneliness, help each other and perhaps get their only meal of the day at the center might not have existed without the type of funds the Reagan Administration has proposed to eliminate, said bandleader Ella Olenicak.

Seniors Describe Programs

“We have 150 people at the center every day, and that’s mostly the only meal they get,” Olenicak said. “We have been playing for about 11 years, since we met at the center. We have, oh, so much fun.”

Twice, sometimes three times a week, 80-year-old Helen Palmer said, she drives to the Brea Senior Center from her mobile home in Carbon Canyon. She said she particularly appreciates the weekly physical fitness classes, and her life has been brighter since the center several years ago.

“You make friends, you find people you yourself can help. We had a self-defense class; there’s been a crochet class, and music and you name it!”

Despite morning sprinkles and the threat of rain, she car-pooled to the rally with other elderly women from the center who brought along plastic rain bonnets and umbrellas, just in case.

“We’re in from the canyon for a sign against the budget cuts. We’re protesting any cuts. The main thing, I guess, is to be down here and be counted.”

Mary Meekins, 76, lives in a federally subsidized housing project in Stanton and works at the Westminster Senior Center. She pays 30% of the rent for her one-bedroom apartment from her income, a combination of Social Security and Supplemental Security Income that amounts to less than $600 a month.

‘I Want to Be Independent’

“I told my daughter I don’t know what the hell I’m gonna do if they cut back the housing money. She said, ‘I’m not going to let you be out on the streets, Mom.’ But I want to be independent as long as I can be. That’s important to me. And it bothered me that we sent all that money to Nicaragua when people here can’t eat or have a place to sleep.”

Maya K. Dunne of the Fair Housing Council of Orange County said, “For assistance to the poor, already the funds have been cut 91%. This is all we have. Think about this figure: We subsidize homeowners $28 billion a year in federal tax deductions.”

Among the many groups represented at the rally was Hermandad Mexicana. Members carrying pickets protested the City of Santa Ana’s aggressive housing code enforcement, which leader Nativo Lopez termed “anti-nuclear family” and discriminatory. Members of the group, many of them undocumented workers, maintain that the city has interpreted the state housing code to mean that families of four or five living in one-bedroom dwellings are violating overcrowding rules.

Lopez’s group arrived late--after Griset had appeared. Lopez asked those who were leaving the rally to attend an April 21 City Council meeting to demand, among other things, a moratorium on the “eviction of families” by the city.

Orange County representatives in Congress and local legislators were invited to the rally, but Dunne said they either did not respond or said they could not attend. A spokesman for Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove) said earlier this week that it was unlikely that Dornan would send a representative because he supports Reagan’s budget. Dornan’s chief of staff did show up at the rally moments before it was over, however. He did not address the group and left a few minutes after the rally ended.